BIOGRAPHY:
~Written by Bill Groff
BIOGRAPHY:
~Bonnie was married to a Billy Ray Blankenship when she was approximately 15 years old (her parents signed for the marriage). This would have been about 1946, 47 or 48. The marriage ended in divorce in May 1949. She married me on September 15, 1952. We disagreed about when I learned of the divorce; when and where I asked her to marry me; and a number of other things about this first marriage for me. John Lawrence (Larry) was born on October 3, 1953. I was going to FTC School at Bainbridge, MD. at the time and had a hard time getting home .It was only with the help of the red cross that I was able to get leave from school. I had to go back one class because of the leave and graduated one class behind the one I started with. I'll add the right dates later but I believe that I graduated about May of 1954. Bonnie had met Robert Byrd (a hospital corpsman At Naval Hospital in Charleston) and had called me one weekend in February(?) asking for a divorce. I was really surprised by it since I did not have any indication or reasons to expect it. I was told by Bonnie that if I did not agree to a divorce she would never let me know about or see Larry again. Since I still had over two years to go in the navy, I could see no alternative to allowing the divorce. The divorce was granted on July 2, 1954 and they got married on July 3, 1954.
BIOGRAPHY:
~Larry's name was changed and Byrd adopted him on August 6, 1954. I was granted visitation rights and did see Larry several times before I went overseas on the USS Hambleton. I think I saw him at Nanny Lawrence later that year when we returned early from the Med cruise because of engine problems. Bonnie came to see me at Mom Groff's sometime in the spring or early summer of 1958. She left Byrd by then and was living in N.Y. City (They all had moved up to New York when he got out of the service (1957 I believe). She got a divorce in Charleston, SC and we remarried in December 1958. It was not always a smooth marriage and in 1985 she became a Catholic but could not take communion officially until she managed to have the church approve an annulment of her marriage to Blankenship making our marriage on September 15,1953 the one recognized by the church. In the meantime I adopted Larry in 1961. I have not seen or heard of Byrd since that time (1961). He was still in New York then but was originally from AL. I believe many of the official papers are still in the possession of the Catholic Church.
